Hillary Clinton attempts to fix Putin-Hitler comparison

WASHINGTON - Potential Democratic US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton on Wednesday tried to clarify comments that left the impression she had compared Russian President Vladimir Putin to German dictator Adolf Hitler.

Clinton, as President Barack Obama's secretary of state in his first term, was a key player in a US effort to reset relations with Russia, a policy that critics say now appears to be a glaring failure.

On Tuesday, Clinton had said Putin's incursion into the Crimea region of southern Ukraine was akin to moves Hitler made in the years before World War Two.

Putin justified sending forces into Crimea by saying he wanted to protect ethnic Russians in Ukraine, which Clinton said was similar to Hitler's vow to protect ethnic Germans in eastern Europe.